


And All the Days Just Break to Test Your Will

by APgeeksout



Category: The Killing
Genre: Post-Episode: s02e13 What I Know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-22
Updated: 2014-06-22
Packaged: 2018-02-05 17:34:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1826470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/APgeeksout/pseuds/APgeeksout





	And All the Days Just Break to Test Your Will

**Author's Note:**

  * For [geckoholic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/geckoholic/gifts).



By the time she reaches Holder's building, the sun is high, burning off the morning haze and plastering the hair that escapes her ponytail to the back of her neck.

She could probably have caught a bus from the Larsen's street, but that would have required remembering or learning schedules and lines and transfers. Would have meant sitting still. Waiting while her course was steered for her.

She's aware of the obvious symbolism involved. Of what Dr. Kerry, with her Good-Cop routine and prescription pad and binder full of terrible childhoods, would make of her refusal to just take a damned seat and let someone else take her where she needs to go. _Do you suppose, Sarah, that this relates to your having felt powerless throughout your childhood?_   Not that knowing any of this slows her feet on the pavement even one step.

The spare key is just where Holder said it would be, under a green flowerpot, which is full of bright, robust marigolds. A splash of color on the otherwise-dull back stoop. The landlady's handiwork? Or Holder's? As she fits the key to the lock, she decides that she wouldn't be surprised any more to discover that he has a green thumb. She can see him with his hands in the dirt, keeping something fragile alive for as long as he can.

As she trudges up the stairs to the second-floor landing and works the lock to Holder's front door, she tries to take a mental inventory of the things she's left inside. The things she'll take with her when she goes.

There's not much: a bag of clothes, a handful of toiletries, a Banker's Box of notes and files. Most of her belongings, such as they were, went ahead of her to Sonoma. To Rick's. Some people - Sarah among them - might have set fire to them or shoved them in a dank garage for the mice and the mold to have their way with, but Rick, she thinks will have stacked them neatly in a spare room or tidy storage unit. This is something she'll have to make arrangements for sooner or later, but she doesn't think it's a bad idea to wait at least until their Honeymoon trip would have been over.

She'll have to make a sweep for Jack's things too. He's a good kid, more put-together than she was at his age - hell, more put-together than she is today - but she made him pack up pretty fast.

Inside the apartment, though, all her efficient purposefulness drains from her. She sinks onto the sofa, beside the pad of notes and the dregs of the coffee she'd abandoned when they blew out of Holder's living room for one last trip to the casino... last night? Has there only been one dawn since then?

She surveys the room from her seat, ostensibly looking for Jack's things or her own, but mostly just noticing again how bright and cozy Holder's place is: lots of natural light, comfortable furniture, soothing colors.  Much as she'd given him shit about the zen garden, the apartment is full of little pieces of decoration that don't appear to belong in a bank lobby.  The whole effect is more welcoming, homier, than any house she's ever kept, and at some point she quits thinking about how little she would've expected that about him to begin with and how much sense it makes now, and drifts into a sound sleep, too tired for dreaming. 

 

"Yo, Linden, you got a grudge against your own neck?  One of these days you've gotta lay down and sleep like a normal person."  His hand is on her shoulder, shaking her gingerly, and she realizes that she's been out in an ungainly crumple, booted feet still on the floor, ready to run.  
  
"Kinda thought I wouldn't be seeing you for a while," Holder says, releasing her and moving back toward his kitchen and the softly-steaming takeout bag that's slowly filling the room with the smells of spices and onions and grease.  Comfort food.    
  
She straightens, and rubs at the place where her neck has, in fact, stiffened up, though judging by the light still streaming through the curtains, she can't have slept that long.    
  
"Sorry to disappoint," she says, voice coming out as a low rasp.  "I'll be out of your hair soon."  
  
"You know it ain't like that," he says, talking loud to be heard over the gurgling of the coffeepot.    
  
And the thing is, she does know it.  Knows that of all the people who've drifted through her adult life, he's the first one she hasn't successfully alienated.  The one who keeps turning up for her in airports and waiting rooms and motels and wherever else she has a bad idea.  Knows that life has somehow left him damaged enough to think that she's good company.  Knows that, of all the places in the world, she is welcome here.    
  
She pulls off her boots, like she really might stay a while, and stands, stretching before she pours herself onto a seat at the counter.  "Thought you'd caught a body?"  
  
"Site turned out to be on Sea-Tac real estate, so the Port's CID is taking lead.  And as of noon," he says, setting a pair of mugs, two plates, silverware on the counter between them, "I am back on leave.  Don't know if it's 'hey, you shot a guy'-leave or 'let your ribs grow back together, dumbass'-leave, but it's pretty clear that they don't want to see this beautiful face."    
  
"Their loss," she says.    
  
"Damn straight."  He tears the carryout bag down the side and produces each of a series of smaller containers with a flourish. "Falafel with extra onions.  Veggie Moussaka.  Tabbouleh.  Baba Ganoush.  Hummus.  Pitas.  Baklava.  French fries.  Don't know what you're over there smirking at, Boss.  You're gonna help me eat it."  

  
       
She lets him overfeed her half a dozen more times, in between runs through his neighborhood and nosing through the shelves of his "Knowledge Corner" and watching the kung-fu marathon that's running on one of the cable channels.  Jack watches the last hour of _Enter the Dragon_ with them on speakerphone, trading trivia about Bruce Lee with Holder. 

Friday morning, she goes out for danish (because it's only fair to take her turn putting food on the table, and bacon is the only breakfast she ever really learned to cook) and a carton of cigarettes (because she's smoked half of his stash) from the little store on the corner, and puts on a pot of coffee while she waits for Holder to stir. 

She might have slipped out in the hours just after dawn, simply never returned from her morning run, maybe left a note.  Wouldn't be the first time.  But Holder deserves more than that; a real goodbye is the least she owes him.

She's nursing her second cup when he emerges, hair ruffled in odd angles over the healing cuts on his face.  Even under the over-sized sweatshirt that swallows him up, she can tell he's moving stiffly, like an old man.  Or a young one who's taken a beating. 

However battered and bleary the morning finds him, he notices her meager possessions collected by the door, ready to go as soon as she is.

"Where you headed?"  He lowers himself onto a seat at the counter and helps himself to one of the pastries from the box she pushes toward him. 

"The coast, maybe." She pours a cup of coffee and sets it in front of him.  "Catch a ferry out of the city anyway." 

"You don't gotta run off.  You can stay here as long you need, you know."  

"I know."  She smiled.  "You'll be first to know if I need someone to be my ride."


End file.
